Video Games A-Go Go!
One of my resolutions for the new year is to get more gaming in and I mean the electricrified hi-pixel variety. I want to catch up on some games I missed when they first dropped as well as stay current on some upcoming releases, such as Mass Effect 3 and Bioshock Infinite.
Logistically, it’s difficult to game even once a week for myself and my crew. Someone always has something which comes up. That often happens when people grow up and aren’t within the development community. I suppose I could (and should) try roleplaying online again, but there still seems to be too many obstacles in the way to truly make me happy. I don’t want to have to battle with technology or invest a lot of time in learning tool sets when my efforts and energies are better spent on developing mechanics or creating a good framework for stories to play out. Since time is, perhaps, my most precious commodity, if I cannot get a face-to-face game in, then I’m often happier holed up in my room gaming in either a single-player experience, such as Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Red Dead Redemption, or Batman: Arkham City, or online in something brutally primal, such as Call of Duty: MW 3.
I’m truly not anti-social. I enjoy the company of others. However, video gaming can be a private experience for me, as I’ll often get ideas for projects I’m working on. There is the Zen quality of the entire process. If I’m riding a horse across the plains in RDR or slogging through the snow on the side of a mountain in Skyrim, there are moments such as Charles Dickens experienced on his daily walks. I get ideas. They come to me, often owing to the fact I am not looking for them.
I was having a discussion with one of the crew today about the valuable currency which is time. Both our arguments are valid–he avoids most games as time sinks while I affirm they allow for necessary down time to enable the mind to recharge. Of course, video games are not the sole source of downtime. There are others which are great, such as exercise, reading, or what-have-you. Video games excite and inspire us. Challenge us to translate things we see and the emotions evoked into the pen-and-paper medium, to codify the interactivity of it all with mechanics sufficient and sublime.
Ultimately, I cannot write and work every waking moment of my life. Something suffers in the process. Something has to give. It’s the law of equivalent exchange. ;)
What about yourself? Do you video game? Consider it a vice? Spend all your free time working on your passion? Let me hear what you’ve gotta say! Post ’em if you got ’em!
Until next time, I bid you, dear reader, adieu!
